Bort - 2012-09-04 Tiger wasn't even born in Africa; his real birth certificate shows he was born on the Indian subcontinent.

Sanest Man Alive - 2012-09-04 I'm going to keep voting for Owl. He has some great ideas to really turn this savanna around, and one day people will listen to reason!

takewithfood - 2012-09-04 Owl? I can't believe you actually buy that gutless centrist's meaningless rhetoric. Owl doesn't stand for anything - I mean, he panders to the herbivore demographic but his voting record is completely pro-carnivore. And call me racist, but I just don't trust avians. Do you really want another lame duck administration, like we had under Duck?

Turtle 2012!

American Standard - 2012-09-04 I love this video and I've linked various people to it half a dozen times.

cognitivedissonance - 2012-09-04 What then is our alternative? The only one I see is breaking the country up into independent cantons, thus allowing political expression on a more reasonable level. But GRRR THAT MAKES US WEEEEAK.

Binro the Heretic - 2012-09-04 Not to mention the fact it would allow human rights violations on a massive scale as states would inevitably enact laws to persecute homosexuals, subjugate women & ethnic minorities and write criminal laws based on religious dogma.

memedumpster - 2012-09-05 I guess you could ask for a more intelligent populace that understands the system and votes around its inherent problems.

This is like a detailed explanation of what cancer is, how it behaves and the damage it does to the human body without any proposal for treatment.

Here's a hint: Include your crackpot scheme for a new voting system in the same video where you talk about how broken the current voting system is. I don't want to have to contaminate my browser history further just to see your hare-brained proposal.

Blue - 2012-09-04 How is it crackpot? Are you fucking retarded? You do realize that there are other countries out there, right? Most countries do not use this system because it is shit.

You may also notice the title of the video. It's not about what system we should use, it's about the problems with this one. There are many options out there with no single option being clearly the best. There is a clear winner for worst system, and it's ours.

The majority of the world's democratic nations use non-FPTP electoral systems. Runoff voting and proportional representation are actual systems that are used in real places. Neither crackpot nor hare-brained ideas.

First Past the Post mostly just belongs to nations that still haven't fully washed the stink of the British out.

takewithfood - 2012-09-04 The video also contains a link to the very next piece in the series, which is about the alternate voting method. It's also at the top of the list of related videos, and a link to the entire series is provided in the comments. Here's an even more direct link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Y3jE3B8HsE

This video is called "The Problems with First Past the Post Voting Explained". In it, the problems with First Past the Post Voting are explained. I... really don't know how that could be more clear.

Binro the Heretic - 2012-09-04 I know the video has a link to the solution. My suggestion was that they include it in the SAME VIDEO.

And yes, despite my snarky remark about not wanting to watch an additional video, I watched it. Despite their optimistic prediction of a third alternative to the two main party candidates winning, I doubt it would turn out that way.

In the US, you'd still have the two polar opposite candidates getting most of the votes and all the alternative candidates' votes eventually going to one or the other.

It would only sort of feel like the majority elected the winner because all the voters who backed an alternative candidate could say to themselves, "Well, at least ONE of the candidates I picked won, even if he was my fifth favorite."

poorwill - 2012-09-05 I am from New Zealand. We switched from FPP to MMP in the 90s. It has its problems - but they are precisely the sort of problems you want in an electoral system. Things wouldn't change overnight, but change would be inevitable. Binro, you're a moron.

Robin Kestrel - 2012-09-05 Think, Binro... the purpose of this video is to point out the implicit weaknesses of the only system most Americans are familiar with.

It is six and a half minutes long, but it has big color pictures of animals and moves along quite briskly.

If it were 30 or 60 minutes long, no one I would want to watch this (i.e., people who were not already aware of the problems of FPTP voting) would tune out during the 10-minute sidetrack into gerrymandering, assuming they'd even press play to begin with.

(I wish more people would do this. Instead of making one long-ass video I have to set aside a block of time to watch, split it into chapters. Aren't hyperlinks directly to specific content the whole purpose of this world wide web thing, anyway?)

FABIO - 2012-09-05 You're arguing what would happen without any knowledge of other systems were it did happen. Geez, Binny.

Robin Kestrel - 2012-09-05 As a chess player, though, it was sort of confusing at first (he mixed up the king's crown and the queen's crown).

muffinbutt - 2012-09-10 This is what I thought the internet would eventually be full of back in the 90's. An exchange of information! But no, it's cat videos and celebrity porn.

CornOnTheCabre - 2012-09-10 INFORMATION IS JUST CRACKPOT BULLSHIT FOR PEOPLE WHO CANT COME UP WITH SOLUTIONS

FUCK TALKING DGHAWIOGEW

Bort - 2013-10-06 There is no solution to the core complaint about "minority rule" -- whatever the voting mechanism, there is still only one position and it will be filled by exactly one person, who will remain the first choice of (possibly) only a minority of people. I'll agree that other voting mechanisms might select more accurately among those minorities, so that the race won't be won by the guy nobody really likes; but as far as individual races go, there's still going to be only one winner and a lot of people won't like that winner.